


Write in Dust and Marble

by sinuous_curve



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, M/M, body alteration/injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 10:08:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Rhodey says, “You passed out,” when they land, as Tony is fending off the obnoxiously invasive hands of half a dozen medical personnel buzzing in his ear about physical trauma and internal trauma and cuts and bruises and broken bones and what </i>is<i> that thing glowing in his chest.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Write in Dust and Marble

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd.

_“Just tell me who told you? Who told you? Rhodey or Pepper? It’s Rhodey or Pepper.”_

 

Tony unintentionally (but perfectly reasonably, he would argue, given the circumstances) falls asleep in the chopper somewhere between the fuck middle of nowhere and the base. 

Rhodey says, “You passed out,” when they land, as Tony is fending off the obnoxiously invasive hands of half a dozen medical personnel buzzing in his ear about physical trauma and internal trauma and cuts and bruises and broken bones and what _is_ that thing glowing in his chest. Tony cut his eyeteeth fending off paparazzi as a sixteen year old. He knows how to get in the way of people trying to grab at him. 

“I am _fine_ ,” Tony insists and stands. 

Tries to stand? He feels like the chopper quarters are cramped enough that no one could prove bullshit that he tripped and grabbed onto Rhodey’s side to steady himself, rather than his fucking knees deciding that holding his body weight is a bullshit. 

“Sure you are,” Rhodey says, but his arm comes up along Tony’s back and holds him up. He’s stronger than he looks, Rhodey. Has been for as long as Tony has known him. His desert camo smells like sand and sweat with Tony’s cheek against his shoulder. Tony’s willing to bet he smells like metal and ash and going however the fuck long he was captive without really washing. 

“I’m peachy,” Tony says.

“Bullshit,” Rhodey says in his ear, and damn if Tony can’t suddenly hear however-the-fuck-long-it-was weeks, or months, worth of strain coloring the tone. “Okay, folks, stand down,” he says to the medics in his lieutenant colonel voice -- pleasant, but not particularly looking for argument -- and they all take a blessed fucking step back. “I will escort Mister Stark to his temporary quarters for a quick -- debriefing.” Tony catches the split second pause. Back in the day debriefing meant fucking and Tony almost laughs inappropriately. Choking it back makes him think of Pepper. 

The medics clearly Aren’t Happy, and Tony gives less than not a single fuck about that. They follow at a couple feet of distance for the entire three legged limp that is Rhodey hauling Tony to the medical unit like the Air Force’s version of goddamn ducklings. Rhodey pushes Tony into a private room, inasmuch as a couple canvas tent flaps constitute privacy, and shoos them away with another judicious application of his commanding officer voice. His commanding officer voice is so fucking hot. 

Tony cocks his head at Rhodey’s back and thinks he might be mildly delirious. Granted, he feels like he’d probably also be justified in that. It’s fucking bizarre to not be surrounded by cave walls. He keeps blinking and expecting it all to vanish. 

Still, the gurney feels real enough as Tony sits down. Hard, just like gurneys are supposed to be. (And God knows Tony knows his way around a gurney between being a kid with no respect for authority, a teenager with a legitimate reason to access highly reactive chemicals, and a few early twenties brushes with alcohol poisoning). He sits down and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. He can feel the metal cylinder of the arc reactor’s setting pressing against his sawed off ribs and it feels weird, and kind of hurts. 

All he fucking had were scraps and missile parts, he thinks defensively. He did the best he could in a cave. 

He looks at Rhodey’s back again. Rhodey is still facing the tent flap door thing. “What?” Tony says. “Are you meditating? What?” 

Rhodey jerks around. The muscle in his jaw is tight and his throat contracts a couple times as he swallows. Tony is good at working people, but only mediocre at really reading them, but he still gets it. “I thought --” Rhodey says, then coughs and shifts his gaze away for a couple seconds. “I thought your dumb ass was dead.” 

Tony blinks at him. “I’m. Not?”

“No, you’re not,” Rhodey says, huffing out laughter that’s not amused. He rubs his palm over the back of his neck

Tony is shitty at this stuff. He always has been, and right now? He’s fucking tired and hungry and trying to turn the last twenty hours, and by extension the time between demoing the Jericho and seeing the choppers descend from the sky like Santa for the US captive, into some kind of extended hallucinatory nightmare. And even beyond that, the part of his mind that really wants to check his fucking email is murmuring practical things about asking and telling, but Tony is about ten miles beyond caring.

“Hey,” he says, and reaches out. He can only just brush the tips of his fingers against Rhodey’s wrist without getting off the gurney, and Tony is actually positive he will end up on the floor if he does that. “Hey. Just. Come here.”

There is a certain undeniable unwillingness in the couple shuffled steps Rhodey takes to close the gap between them. Tony would really like to push his face into the worn fabric of Rhodey’s jacket and just rest for a couple minutes, but there’s not caring and then there’s actively fucking over one of the two people in the world who are regularly willing to deal with his shit. So he settles for hooking his first two fingers -- burned and callused as they are from his latest and probably most spectacular build to date -- in the pocket with Rhodey’s last name on it. 

“Not dead,” Tony repeats, nodding. “Okay? Not dead.” 

Rhodey presses his fist to Tony’s chest, right above his heart. And the shrapnel, Tony thinks. Fucking shrapnel. “Not dead,” Rhodey agrees. “Now what the fuck is in your chest?”

Tony laughs and does, for a split damn second, let himself press his forehead to Rhodey’s chest. Rhodey’s hands come up most likely without his permission and light for a heartbeat on Tony’s head, then settle on his shoulders. It’s not a hug, because they are best friends and they already cashed in their free display of affection kneeling together on the desert sand. Tony gets how this works. He does. 

“It’s -- it’s,” Tony says, straightening. “It’s kind of horrifying. And awesome. Here let me just--” 

He catches the hem of his shirt in his fingers and starts to yank it off, but he has to stop halfway through because his shoulder explodes in a sharp spray of pain that gently reminds him he fucking fell out of the sky three hours ago. 

“Tony.”

“I’m fine,” Tony insists. He gets his arm that isn’t lobbing napalm down his nerves through the arm hole. “I am just fucking dandy.”

Rhodey frowns at him. “You’re full of shit,” but he helps. He eases Tony shirt down his arm that doesn’t feel like raising higher than the bottom of his ribs is a great idea and sets it next to Tony on the gurney. Tony would put several thousand dollars on that it’s going to leave a smear of dirt behind, but that’s not particularly important at this juncture. 

And besides. Rhodey is staring at his chest with fucking kid on Christmas/deer in the headlights eyes. 

“What.” Rhodey swallows. “What the hell is that, Tony?” 

“It’s an arc reactor.”

Rhodey frowns and looks up. “That’s the thing that powers your factory, isn’t it?”

Tony grins. “Good job, lieutenant.” 

Without the shirt in the way, the arc reactor casts a strong, light blue glow onto Rhodey’s chest. It makes his desert camo look almost like navy camo, and it pushes odd, blue shadow onto Rhodey’s face. He looks fucking ghostly. And awed. He should be awed, Tony thinks, and then realizes maybe he’s slightly more out of it than he thought. His shoulder really hurts. 

“It’s smaller,” Rhodey says, tripping slightly over the words like he meant to say something else. 

“Miniaturized,” Tony agrees. “It didn’t seem practical to carry around a full sized one.”

There’s a really very obvious question they’re skirting around, not talking about. Tony thinks about the car battery hooked up to his internal organs that Yinsen cobbled together. That was actually incredibly impressive. This was just reworking an existing idea with the added elegance that most second tries have. 

“Just ask,” Tony says. Rhodey’s hand is tight on his hurt shoulder and the unconscious pressure is sending little zings of pain down his arm. He wants vicodin. 

Rhodey licks his lips and the muscle in his jaw does a little jump. He shakes his head, looks upward like conversations with Tony tend to make him and then down. And then, finally, back at Tony. “Why is there a goddamn arc reactor in your chest?” 

Tony grins maniacally. “Because there are bomb fragments a couple millimeters away from my heart. And it’s powering a magnet that keeps them from. Killing me.”

The expression that spasms over Rhodey’s face makes Tony want to flinch away for the rawness of it. It’s worse than the time Tony woke up from almost dying of alcohol poisoning with Rhodey sitting beside his bed looking ashen. Worse than the time they got caught in Rhodey’s base office, when only the good auspices of a liberal leaning pilot kept Rhodey from getting in some some serious telling hot water. 

“Hey,” Tony says. He grabs Rhodey’s hand and presses it to the reactor. Harder than skin, maybe, and humming rather than beating. But alive. Alive, alive, a-fucking-live. “Not dead.” Tony says. “Say it.”

“Not dead,” Rhodey repeats, quietly. “Okay.”


End file.
